Episode I: Lucky Cats And A Load Of Old Tat
Before we meet the candidates, let's just grab some soundbites. It's always good to listen to these guys and girls big themselves up onscreen, to then see them make a total mess of things, often in the first task. What I particularly like is when the person who's first to be fired makes a grandiose claim such as "I AM the Apprentice!" or "There's no way I'm going home!" Class! So here are some of the things that the new candidates, all vying to hop onto Lord Sugar's money train, think of themselves, and want us all to know. "I'm a great of my generation!" --- A great what, he don't say! He takes inspiration from Napoleon though apparently. Um, ever heard of Waterloo? "I'm half machine!" Yes, but half of WHAT machine? Perhaps a Speak-and-Spell? "I just feel my effortless superiority will take me all the way!" --- Yeah, all the way to that waiting black cab! "I'm an old head on young shoulders". --- Who looks like a cross between a vampire and a seagull...Hmm. a vampire, eh? Could be a
very old head... "I'm business perfection personfied." Stop, stop! You're killing me! This is too much! "I have energy like a duracell bunny, sex appeal of Jessica Rabbit and the brain of Einstein." Nearly made it three for three there with the rabbit references. Come on be fair: give old Albert his brain back --- you're not using it! "I will do anything to win: cheating, manipulating, I will do it." Probably the most honest statement an Apprentice candidate has made in the long history of the series. Bet he means it too! One of the early quotes of the episode: "We're gonna run like hell to sell those ukuleles!" Oh, my sides! Please, just stop! All right, all right! Settle down. Let's kick things off, shall we? Got your popcorn? Phone turned off? Door locked, kids in bed? You don't have kids? Quick, run out and get some, and put them to bed! All righty then, as Captain Picard would say, with a pointing finger akin to that of the captain of this particular ship, engage! Lord Sugar has chosen, again, midnight to meet the candidates. Should suit the vampire seagull guy anyway! They're given their first task and it's --- shock horror! --- a selling task! Basically the same sort of thing Lord Sugar has been trotting out for a few seasons now, dressed up to be a bit more interesting by virtue of the goods to be sold being in a shipping container. Before he gives them their task he tells them he's sick and tired of "all these bloody cliches" --- aren't we all, Lord Sugar? But then, where would this show be without them? You can be guaranteed that we're going to hear more than once things like "I give 110 percent" or "I have a passion for business", you know the sort of thing. Stepping forward as the leader of the boys, a man who has never run a business, nor even held down a job in his life. Jason has been studying for surely longer than is advisable at his age, but he's happy to volunteer to grasp the often poison chalice, although he does offer it to anyone else if they want it. Surprise, surprise! Nobody does! Well, when a guy throws himself on a live grenade to save your life do you push him off and say I'll do that? Mind you, it's a real picture when the boys later ask him what he does, and he says "A bit of this, a bit of that!" Faces fall. The men are not happy. Volunteering for the girls, Jaz, who is an "education enterpreneur", whatever that is. But she seems to think she's a teacher (maybe she is) and her management style appears to be of the happy-happy clappy-clappy let's-all-work-together variety, ie lots of motivation but not too much organisation. And these are the leaders. Oh, it's good to be back! Hilarious when vampire seagull guy, who is called Alex, is asked does he ever get told he looks like someone and says, quite unaccountably and unsupportably, "Freddie Mercury", while one of the guys suggests Dracula, a more likely outcome. Man, he is scary and weird looking. And Welsh. Not that I have anything against Wales or its people. Vampires, now they're a whole other story. And the stupidity meter is going off the scale! One of the girls (yes I know they all have names but right now they're just one big amorphous, mostly annoying mass) mentions the name Alchemy for their group, and another admits she has no idea what that means! They settle on Evolve though, while the boys take Endeavour, with a stirring speech by their PM: "We all want to win, but it's not always going to happen." Way to give 110 percent there, Jason! And so it's off to sell a variety of items, from novelty cats to toilet rolls, and all at the crack of dawn. Time to split the teams up, although Jason has a hard time making his voice heard. Ah, let's be honest: they completely shout him down. He must be thinking it was never like this in college! As Kirk once said to Khan, "I'm laughing at the superior intellect." Jason has said that his intellect is like a "machete in the jungle" (where do they get these ideas?) but it doesn't look like it's going to cut it with these guys! On Jaz's subteam, Leah, a doctor by trade, organises her girls quite well, though she'd do well to watch Rebecca, who looks like Cruella deVille, and also looks like she'd take the eye from your head and come back for the other one if you crossed her. The vampire stare does not work for Alex ---
you will pay me anything I want: you cannot resist! --- and he's pushed down to the wholesaler's regular buying price, so a result for the buyer but not the seller. Jason tries to sell the lucky cats for six pounds but is knocked down to half that, then one of the guys offers to ALSO buy batteries and fit them! Why? What did he gain, other than adding another 25p onto the price? And they're going to have to buy the batteries, not to mention losing time fitting them and repacking the cats! But the best idiocy is held back for the girls' subteam under Jaz's direction, who decide to take Chinese lucky cats to ... Chinatown! They're doomed from the start. To quote the late great Phil Lynott: "Man, you don't stand a chance if you go down in Chinatown!" Not only do they arrive too early and nowhere is open, but the Chinese know what these things cost back home and are not prepared to spend more on them here, especially when the shops all around are chock full of them. Mixing Chinese and Japanese terminology, Leah remarks that "It's all going a bit kamikaze!" while Jaz's team makes the fatal rookie error of trying to do business with someone who has no authority to deal. That won't go down well in the boardroom later! The other subteam are doing better, far better, while on the boys' team Jason worries that they'll be seen as "purveyors of tat". Really? You think? They also manage to drop a mug, which shatters on the ground. Oh dear. Jaz tries to get her other subteam to try to sell the cat litter they have in --- wait for it --- the Battersea Cat and Dogs' home, but they think it's too far. The boys don't, and off they go, selling all their stock. Neil, who confesses to "despising cats" --- that's him off my Christmas card list then! --- nevertheless tries to drive the sale even though Zeeshan --- whom we shall forever after refer to as Zee --- is supposed to be doing it. He makes the unfunniest, and most pointless, quip of the episode when he says "I realise it's a dog eat dog world". Oh come on! He then has a fight with Neil over the phone. Now that's more like it! Mind you, there's a cringeworthy scene where poor Zee tries to initiate a "high five", one of them saying in an incredulous tone "Really?" and the rest of the team just giving him a withering look, as if to say "What are you, twelve?" They definitely leave him hanging, and it's an awkward (and funny, in a nasty little way) moment. Back in Chinatown, now that it's open, and overriding Sophie's worries that it's a bad idea, Jaz's subteam just about manage a partial sale: this guy knows what he normally pays for the cats, and Sophie's contention that "Everything is more expensive in London" doesn't fly with him. Well, it wouldn't would it? He's under no obligation to buy. But when Tim makes a sale, this time of hi-vis jackets, it's unnerving to see the way he moves! He's like some sort of budgie or parrot, moving and bobbing and weaving as if someone is controlling him from outside of camera shot! I hope he hasn't got some crazy condition that makes him move like that, but if he doesn't it's just, well, weird! More animal motifs as the girls, trying to sell their cat litter, moan that it's "flogging a dead horse!" Time is running out, but they manage to make some decent sales, Rebecca turning out to be the star. Then we get that wonderful quote about ukuleles, although to be fair nobody runs: they just sort of walk a little faster, though not much. Trading time is over and everyone heads back to the boardroom to see who won. Now we really get interested. It's always in the boardroom that the true colours come out. I'm constantly amused by how before they know if they won or lost, a team will often rip their PM to shreds, then if they win it's all friends again as if nothing was said. And one of these days I want someone to lock that frosted glass door so Lord Sugar can't get in! The response of the candidates to his arrival reminds me of days in church as a kid, intoning "Lord, graciously hear us"! Lord Sugar certainly takes the praise, but he's no benevolent god! Beginning the interrogation he notes that that the first rule in trading is make sure you're not talking to the cleaning lady! He's not impressed by the story of the attempt to sell to someone who was not authorised to buy, but he's less impressed with the name the boys chose for their team: "Endeavour", he says archly, "something you attempt that might not work." They look like they're regretting the name choice now. He's keen to show he's no uneducated Eastender though, referencing the Golden Fleece when he talks to Jason, but he missed out at the beginning telling Jason he should marshal his Argonauts: now that would have impressed me! Karren reveals that she has had a day of following the bickering boys (isn't that usually how we describe the women?) and is, in her words, "tired of it". Lord Sugar is though less than impressed (as no doubt is Neil) when Alex gets the name of his subteam leader wrong, calling him Liam! Oh dear! Mind you, Neil himself does not point out the vampire seagull's mistake, if he noticed it. Lord Sugar is also critical of their idea to provide batteries for the cats, and we're treated to another of his calculated witticisms as he tells Tim the mad parrot that "sometimes you can step back so far you fall over the cliff!" Well if he does sure he'll be able to fly, won't he? So it's time for totting up, and in the end it's the boys who narrowly scrape through. Bizzarely, Tim starts talking about how he's going to change -- dancing his head around like a mad budgie again --- until Lord Sugar points out to him "You won --- shut up!" The treat is, well, a big dinner cooked by some poncy chefs, but then that's becoming par for the course. It'll be the later treats that will be interesting to note. Jaz seems to think she did nothing wrong, when in fact she just about did nothing right, other than appointing Leah, who was a much better leader, to the subteam. Lord Sugar sums up her motivational speeches in one phrase: "it all adds up to jack shit!" Fighting for her life, Jaz tries to make out that it was her strategy that allowed Leah's team to do so well, but Leah ain't having that! Things are not looking good for the "educational entrepreneur"! Jaz is left to pick two people to accompany her back to the boardroom, and over their strong protestations --- look, that never works. Well it did, once, but only once ---Uzma and Sophie are chosen. Before they come in again, during the discussion Lord Sugar has with Nick and Karren, there's a rather funny moment --- well, I thought it was funny! --- where Nick makes a face and says "Sophie was a bi-" and I thought he was going to say something else, but he finishes, "big disappointment." Uzma is not happy to be called "logistics girl", but Sophie is described as a "passenger", never a good thing to be called. Sophie tries to remind her PM that she advised against selling the cats in Chinatown, which Lord Sugar likens to "selling coal to Newcastle". Mind you, the fact that Sophie only raised this objection when they had arrived in Chinatown is glossed over.
Jaz however digs her own grave when she sighs "Oh man!" and Lord Sugar growls "I'm not man, I'm Lord Sugar." NOT clever. Given that, and the fact that she led the team so badly, and to a failure, it's Jaz who's shown the door. One down, fourteen to go. Interestingly, she doesn't thank Lord Sugar for the opportunity; she's obviously pissed. But whatever else you do, you do NOT treat Lord Sugar as an equal! I must admit, I didn't like Jaz but I'm sort of annoyed the boys won. Jason, far from being a legendary hero and leader of men, was a terrible Project Manager, another one of these who thinks that just because you have what Donald Trump chooses to call "book smarts" that you're better than anyone else. "My intellect is like a machete"? Well it could certainly do with a little sharpening up there, college boy! And later he says, at the end of the task as they head to the boardroom with not too much in the way of sales, "There's only so much lion-taming a Project Manager can do". Lion taming? They ate you alive, son! So that's episode one of the new series done and dusted, and it hasn't disappointed. Already we have a vampire, a budgie and, er, a lion tamer to contend with, and that's just on the boys' team! It's going to be great fun when Lord Sugar starts mixing up the teams later! See you next week --- what? Oh yeah! Another episode tonight! Good old BBC! Mind you, a sleepless night ahead for me as I compile and write the next review, but then, I didn't get where I am today by not staying up all night writing reviews of The Apprentice!